There has been quite a bit of discussion concerning the relative merits of Sarah Palin versus the Chosen One. So HERE is a helpful tale of the tape and as the disclaimer adds, just remember they are not running for the same job!

I understand that there are many decent Americans who will vote for the Democrat Party and I respect their opinions whilst not agreeing with them. But there is a nasty side to some of the most senior Democrat professional politicians and McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin has brought it out.

On a plane from Denver to Charlotte following the Democrats’ convention, I found myself seated behind former National Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Don Fowler and Congressman John Spratt of South Carolina. Their conversation was interesting to say the least. For example, they made fun of Sarah Palin for several minutes, Fowler calling her “Dan Quayle” on steroids and Spratt creatively describing her as “just terrible.” They both agreed that, “Other than the simple fact that she’s a female,” she has nothing to offer…”

…and then came this.

If a senior Republican said it – the MSM would have run it on the hour every hour. It’s a major gaffe and yet it is hushed up by a rotten conniving pro-Democrat media.

What is to me made of the suggestion that everyday convenient and disposable items such as nappies and razor blades could be taxed as luxury goods under Government plans..ahem…”to cut waste”.

A major report drawn up for ministers suggests items that cannot be re-used or recycled should face punitive taxes similar to those imposed on alcohol and tobacco. The study, funded by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, suggests the taxes would stop consumers viewing disposable items as the “cheap and easy option”, and persuade manufacturers to produce more durable goods. Products targeted include what the report calls “the usual suspects”, such as disposable nappies and plastic carrier bags. However, it also suggests taxes could be applied to other disposable goods, such as paper plates, plastic cutlery and disposable barbecues.[>

I’m with Matthew Sinclair, policy analyst at the Tax-Payers’ Alliance, who says that people and businesses are already paying taxes to cut waste.[> “Every respected, independent estimate has concluded that Landfill Tax already more than accounts for the problems created by sending waste to landfill. New tax rises on disposable products aren’t necessary and the only reason the Government would think about them would be to cynically grab more of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. Politicians must stop using environmental concerns as a smokescreen for raising taxes. A study released by the TaxPayers’ Alliance last week showed families are already paying an average £783 a year in unnecessary “green” taxes. [>

This is government using the faux green agenda to crank up the tax take. It is also a way to damage those who perhaps operate towards the lower end of the economic scale. This is a government that is obsessed with raising taxation and which looks for every opportunity to take more and more of our income.

Interesting to read that I am not alone when it comes to figuring the best way to deal with terrorists…

“More than 3,500 insurgents have been “taken off the streets of Baghdad” by the elite British force in a series of audacious “Black Ops” over the past two years. It is understood that while the majority of the terrorists were captured, several hundred, who were mainly members of the organisation known as “al-Qa’eda in Iraq” have been killed by the SAS. The SAS is part of a highly secretive unit called “Task Force Black” which also includes Delta Force, the US equivalent of the SAS. The prime targets have been those intent on joining the wave of suicide car bombers that claimed around 3,000 lives a month in Baghdad at the height of the terrorist campaign in 2006. Using intelligence gleaned from spies and informers, Task Force Black has nearly broken the back of the terrorist network and reduced bombings in Baghdad from about 150 a month to just two. “

I see that Ray Nagin the mayor of New Orleans has ordered a total evacuation of the city as what he calls the “mother of all storms”, Hurricane Gustav, tears across the Caribbean. He’s saying that everyone needs to get out of New Orleans. I ask; is this not an over-reaction following what happened with Katrina?This “run away” reaction seems odd to me – is this the American spirit?I fully appreciate the issues surrounding Katrina but this response by Nagin strikes me as him trying to cover his political posterior and less to do with dealing with a hurricane. Perhaps I am wrong but I find the tone adopted by Nagin and his associates verging on the hysterical.

I don’t know about you but when I read that Irish discount airline Ryanair is seeking to save money by curbing the discretionary rights of pilots to request extra fuel – I figure that is another good reason NOT to fly this airline.

“Under European rules, every plane must carry a “contingency” load of about 5% of a trip’s fuel, and enough to divert to an alternative airport. Across the airline industry, captains also have a duty to anticipate delays from headwinds, storms and rerouting, and to request extra fuel to cope with this. Pilots at Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, must now abide by a limit of 300kg of extra fuel, costing £180. This provides about five minutes of extra stacking time for a Boeing 737. Under European rules, every plane must carry a “contingency” load of about 5% of a trip’s fuel, and enough to divert to an alternative airport. Across the airline industry, captains also have a duty to anticipate delays from headwinds, storms and rerouting, and to request extra fuel to cope with this. Pilots at Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost airline, must now abide by a limit of 300kg of extra fuel, costing £180. This provides about five minutes of extra stacking time for a Boeing 737.”

Air travel is always a bit stressful but can you imagine what it must be like to be a captain of an aircraft running out of fuel and options purely because of lunatic cost-saving by those clowns trying to keep their commercial model flying at all costs?

How fitting that today, the last day of summer, sees the delectable Keira Knightley and yours truly contributing to the Review section of Ireland’s Sunday Tribune newspaper. Now then my old pal Keira adorns the cover, which given her photogenic (If somewhat emaciated?) looks seems right and proper. She making a new movie called “The Duchess” and she offers fans an insight into what the movie is all about inside. A review of my first book “Unionism Decayed” by Suzanne Breen props up the rear of the section. I hope you might read it if you can the Tribune or else go here as she really does “get” the entire point of the book and also picks up one of the better lines I dreamed up when writing it concerning the status of unionists; hint – it involves cannibalism. I am much indebted to Suzanne for the review and she proves once again why she is such an excellent (and contrarian) journalist herself. Suzanne disagrees with my contention that Unionism has lost out big time care of the Belfast Agreement, she reckons it is IRA/Sinn Fein who have lost the most. I was thinking this over and it is possible that we are BOTH right – liberty, freedom and democracy have lost out and worse than useless politicians are the only people who have gained narrow sectional short term advantage. I suggested to Suzanne that I was thinking of updating the title to “Unionism Depraved”….either way no one wins when we appease evil! Hope YOU have also bought the book and have your own opinions on the topic. If not, it’s available for you here! (Love the way Amazon can’t spell)

The Obama campaign has been in full denial mode for months over the Obamanations relationship with unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. Obama has lied about his relationship with Ayers, whom he now dismisses as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” He’s familiar with him, they passed in a hallway once, and when Ayers blew up the pentagon Barrack was only 8 years old.

Never mind the fact that Obama launched his political career with a fundraiser at Ayers house, that they served on several boards together, or did several speaking tours together. He barely knows the man. Spin Spin Spin

Well a gentleman by the name of Kurtz has been doing the research that the MSM refuses to do. Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Harvard-educated social anthropologist and frequent contributor to National Review, among other publications.

Kurtz has written extensively, and with factual detail, about Obama’s early career as a “community organizer,” his cultivation of benefactors in the most radical cauldrons of Chicago politics, his long-time pastor’s immersion in Black Liberation Theology, and his ties to anti-American zealots.

This brings us to Ayers a confessed terrorist who, having escaped prosecution due to surveillance violations that came to light during his decade on the lam after a bombing spree, landed an influential professorship in education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In England an Northern Ireland Ayers would probably be the one holding office. Ayers remains defiantly proud of bombing the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, and other targets. He expresses regret only that he didn’t do more. He did so in an article that was published on 9-11-01, hows that for irony.

This brings us to their association where they worked closely together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). The CAC was a major education reform project, proposed by Ayers, which was underwritten by a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation, complemented by another $100 million in private and public funding. The project ran for about five years, beginning in 1995.

Obama, then a 33-year-old, third-year associate at a small law firm, having no executive experience, was brought in to chair the board of directors, which oversaw all “fiscal matters.” By the time the CAC’s operations were wound down in 2001 it had doled out more than $100 million in grants but had failed to achieve any improvement in the Chicago schools. What little is known about the grants Obama oversaw is troubling.

One of the first CAC awards in 1995 was $175,000 for the “Small Schools Workshop,” which had been founded by Ayers and was then headed by Mike Klonsky. It was only the beginning of the CAC’s generous funding of Klonsky — a committed Maoist who had been an Ayers comrade in the radical Students for a Democratic Society (the forerunner of Ayers’ Weatherman terrorist organization), and who hosted a “social justice” blog on the Obama campaign website until his writings were hastily purged in June.

After months of being blocked from the records of the CAC which are held at the University that Ayers teaches, Kurtz finally got access and is now researching them, and releasing what he finds.

Kurtz appeared on a radio show in Chicago to discuss some of his findings. Upon hearing he was scheduled the Obamma campaign sent out an e-mail requesting everyone associated with the campaign to flood the radio station with calls and demand he not be aired. Kurtz has obviously hit a nerve. It is the same nerve hit by the American Issues Project, whose television ad calling for examination of the Obama/Ayers relationship has prompted the Obama campaign to demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation.

You have to laugh, don’t you? After the INSPIRED selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running-mate, the disconcerted Obama campaign has launched into her – accusing her of inexperience! LOL – coming from Obama that’s a laugh! As readers know, I am not a fan of McCain but he has made a brilliant choice here which Has SURELY popped the media driven bubble following the Dem’s coronation of the king of fools in Denver this past week? Memo to Obama – it is John McCain, not Sarah Palin, who is standing for President and when it comes o experience. McCain runs rings around Obama and the Dems know it. Attacking Sarah Palin for being inexperienced merely shows just how unbalanced the Obamessiah campaign has become – and things are only just starting! I think Obama may find that getting into the White House needs a lot more than just unthinking MSM mass approval – ask John Kerry.

You do not defeat terrorism by rewarding terrorists, regardless of how many bleeding heart liberals argue otherwise. Want to know where that flawed approach leads to? Read UNIONISM DECAYED 1997-2007 - It's my first book and it explains what happens when you seeek to appease terrorists and call it peace. It's available right now for ATW readers so make sure you get your copy by emailing the editor! This is the book that dissents from the herd mentality that doing wrong can lead to being right. It doesn't and this book spells out WHY.

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